Dark Matter

Dark Matter" shifts haphazardly between a playful look at immigrants in America and a sledgehammer take on cultural isolation and differences, complete with heavy-handed dialogue (Joanna's husband tells her, "I just don't understand the need you have to make a connection"). ... Full Review

as these lucid moments in the earlier part of the film are strong and memorable highlights with which to leave the theatre Its a shame because direction in the first two acts is lyrical and often represents the sort of divine/madman spark that seems at the heart of most great ideas. ... Full Review

A brilliant Chinese graduate student at a fictitious American university violently flips out in "Dark Matter," an unsatisfying drama that premiered at Sundance '07 and was supposedly delayed because of the Virginia Tech shootings. The condescending mentor - threatened when his prot�g� offers an alternative to the professor's widely accepted theory of dark matter (an unseen substance that shapes the universe) - is extremely well played by Aidan Quinn. ... Full Review

Aidan Quinn is not entirely believable as an academic....Meryl Streep's Joanna lacks definition, causing her relationship with Liu Xing to be somewhat confounding.....The film's most effective narrative technique is using Liu Xing's letters to his parents in China as voiceover monologues.....These intermittent scenes, at least, clue us in to his intense drive to make his parent's proud.... ... Full Review

Production Stills: View here The feature film debut of renowned opera and theater director Chen Shi-Zheng, "Dark Matter" delves into the world of Liu Xing (Chinese for "Shooting Star"), a Chinese science student pursuing a Ph.D. When the head of the department, Jacob Reiser (Aidan Quinn), welcomes Liu Xing into his select cosmology group, it seems that only hard work stands between him and a bright future in American science. ... Full Review

The final act of "Dark Matter" is grim but unconvincing, and the shortfall leaves an ugly, exploitive taste in your mouth. Quinn makes the professor a hateful but believable figure under his New Age beard, riding on his students' breakthroughs and making sure no one gets more attention than he does. ... Full Review

It's a quiet but highly charged moment that speaks volumes in its silence, thereby making it the only scene in Chen Shi-Zheng's film that isn't TV movie-grade humdrum. here's exactly one sterling scene in Dark Matter , an encounter between brilliant but increasingly marginalized cosmology researcher Liu Xing (Liu Ye) and his department's generous, China-obsessed benefactor Joanna (Meryl Streep). ... Full Review

At the Sundance Film Festival in January, "Dark Matter," a fictional account inspired by the shootings, won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for the best feature film dealing with science or technology - "not a genre that attracts a lot of people to work on," in the words of Brian Greene, a physicist, mathematician and author from Columbia University who was on the panel of judges. ... Full Review

The problem with "Dark Matter" is.... ... Full Review

If there's an immediate miracle to celebrate about "Dark Matter," it has to be how the film can consistently introduce cosmology subjects and terminology....Chen directs with outstanding visual gusto and a gutsy sympathetic perspective....Holding "Matter" high is the cast, with special attention to Ye Liu's performance as the eager, but ultimately stunted Lui Xing..... ... Full Review